Many American kids can NOT read

[Bill Ryan]

I nearly used this video below — which is a whole year old, OMG! — to start a companion thread titled The Kids Aren't Alright. That's because the entire education system in the US is at crisis point, with multiple other issues showing up besides illiteracy.

(It's interesting to read the hundreds of alarmed comments on this and dozens of other similar videos. One thing that seems clear from a number of commenters is that the same problem is NOT present in Japan, South Korea, or China. But I'd love to know more about the the iPad generation in schools in the UK, Europe, and Russia.)

Gen Alpha can’t read, but it's okay because we have AI now

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=FiLK_jXpy1o

[Ewan]

I'd love to know what John Taylor Gatto would have said about this.

I suspect he might have seen it coming but shook it off as impossible!

[Bill Ryan]

Posted by Ewan (here)
I'd love to know what John Taylor Gatto would have said about this.

I suspect he might have seen it coming but shook it off as impossible!

John Taylor Gatto (1935—2018, Wiki page here) lived most of his professional life before the internet and social media. He published the best-selling book Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling in 1992, in which he argued that public schools damage children by teaching obedience and conformity rather than real thinking. (He's right.)

He summarized the following:

1. School confuses the students. It presents an incoherent ensemble of information that the child needs to memorize to stay in school. Apart from the tests and trials, this programming is similar to the television; it fills almost all the "free" time of children. One sees and hears something, only to forget it again.
2. It teaches them to accept their class affiliation.
3. It makes them indifferent.
4. It makes them emotionally dependent.
5. It makes them intellectually dependent.
6. It teaches them a kind of self-confidence that requires constant confirmation by experts (provisional self-esteem).
7. It makes it clear to them that they cannot hide, because they are always supervised.

Here's the book, in the Avalon Library:

https://avalonlibrary.net/ebooks/Joh...0Schooling.pdf

[shaberon]

Posted by Bill Ryan (here)
John Taylor Gatto (1935—2018, Wiki page here) lived most of his professional life before the internet and social media. He published the best-selling book Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling in 1992, in which he argued that public schools damage children by teaching obedience and conformity rather than real thinking. (He's right.)

So it's a generational deficiency amplified by new technology.

How are damaged children of the 90s supposed to be example setters today?

Please don't get back with me on that.

This is again something that appears primarily American, and, yes, it's simply a region of ignorance. That really is the number one feature of the whole thing, and, it has been, more or less in keeping with the Red Scare.

About eighty years ago, we buried our heads in the sand, and have been going backwards ever since. I mean, we posted an eighth-grade test from the 1930s that I would find hard to pass or at least it would make you think really hard about a few things.

Maybe I am a bit lucky, as I've said before, I meet a lot of people basically right out of high school and a lot of them are in fact wicked intelligent. Nevertheless, there are things missing from their development, causing something like permanent immaturity.


On the historical note, in America, regardless of whatever the federal government may have said or done, textbooks were handled at the state level. So what we actually had was a crawl of private companies selling their book to a buyer who was under pressure to get something. It's like changing your body by replacing you atom by atom. And so the dumbing down, that's by design. Not in a voted-for way, maybe a Zionist one.

I didn't get my personal value on education from school, that's for sure. I saw a project that was done at the community college recently and it was the same as a toy I had when I was eight. I actually took it into the third grade and got credit.

Then, the first computer class happened because I started it myself. That was when there was no such thing and I never heard of it again; there weren't computers in schools that I remember. I'm not responsible for the way it turned out.

If it is possible for the scores of these kids to keep sinking lower, well, consider the source, how would you expect any of those people in charge to be a reliable source of guidance?

[Isserley]

Posted by Bill Ryan (here)
One thing that seems clear from a number of commenters is that the same problem is NOT present in Japan, South Korea, or China. But I'd love to know more about the the iPad generation in schools in the UK, Europe, and Russia

I can speak for EU & Croatia and good news is that the European Union is moving toward significant restrictions on children's access to social media, driven by concerns over mental health and online safety.

On July 13, 2026, the European Commission received a report recommending that access to social media be restricted for children under the age of 13 unless supervised by a parent or teacher. The report also suggested that teenagers aged 13 to 18 should only access platforms with specific safety features, such as limits on infinite scrolling. European Commission President is expected to propose an EU-wide law regarding these restrictions in September 2026.

France has become the first EU country to enact a national law banning social media for children. On July 21, 2026, the French parliament voted to prohibit social media use for anyone under the age of 15. The law, championed by President Emmanuel Macron, requires platforms to prevent children under 15 from creating new accounts starting September 2026, with existing accounts to be blocked by January 2027. The legislation also includes a ban on mobile phones in high schools and mandates age verification checks.

Distinct from social media bans, numerous European countries have implemented or are considering bans on mobile phones within school premises to improve concentration and reduce distractions.

Countries with National Bans:

Italy, Spain, and Albania had existing bans prior to 2024.
The Netherlands implemented a ban in secondary schools previously and extended it to primary schools in September 2024.
Hungary enacted a nationwide ban in September 2024.
Greece has also implemented a ban.
Countries Considering or Implementing Bans:
Belgium (specifically the Wallonia-Brussels Federation) decided to ban recreational mobile phone use starting in the 2025/2026 school year.
Finland and Ireland are currently considering national bans.
School-Level Measures: In countries without a national mandate, such as Poland, Germany, Denmark, Switzerland, Portugal, and Croatia, individual schools have increasingly adopted their own restrictions. For instance, in Denmark, approximately 88% of schools have banned smartphones independently, same in Croatia.

Awareness regarding the negative impacts of smartphones, social media, and excessive screen time on children's mental health, attention spans, and development is growing I am afraid it may be too late for some demographics to fully undo the damage.

https://www.euronews.com/next/2024/1...nes-in-schools

https://phonelocker.com/the-global-g...es-in-schools/

[DNA]

In the US, schools have been forced to follow federal guidelines if they want the federal money.
Same thing with the Rockefeller grants from a hundred years ago.

Schools are focused on victim politics.
Gender dysphoria, race, white privilege, sex education and homosexual encouragement.
Schools fixate on sex, masterbation, hormone replacement therapy.

There is the don't hurt anybody's feelings mandate.
No one gets a failing grade for fear of hurting their feelings.

The whole thing is a ploy for engineering good little socialists.

The biggest crime you can commit in these schools is being born a straight white male and no I'm not going to use that ciss classification. The only defense a straight white guy has against being the target of teachers and every other demographic is to become the biggest advocate of the white privilege myth or to start sucking a few d!cks and claiming gay status.
To a lesser degree this is true for white females as well.

If you have a white kid in the American public school system and they become a trans, self hating, advocate to exterminate the white race you should know that came about through school indoctrination.
That and through the whole thing they may not be able to read or do math and they may have a fictional idea of what history is

[shaberon]

Posted by Isserley (here)
Awareness regarding the negative impacts of smartphones, social media, and excessive screen time on children's mental health, attention spans, and development is growing I am afraid it may be too late for some demographics to fully undo the damage.

That's impressive it's being taken seriously.

I bet they will see a difference, like salvaging themselves.

The corollary is, at what age does it exactly become good for you?

I mean, I could say, wine and beer could be said to have something good for you, and, it is fine when you are three, since that is certainly when I started drinking them. But I'm not sure I can say there's an age where hard liquor really has anything good for you.

Of course, I have a negative standpoint. I like an adult-sized pc that lives in one place and then I go away from it. I dislike portable anything categorically.


On a comparative analysis, here, we have gone through every iteration of computing. Places like Brazil simply started with something like Pentium III-class machines. Smaller places like Nepal rolled out 4G. They haven't fiddled with slow computers, or dial-up modems, or any of that. All they know is primarily portables and social media. Part of the revolt there was the government didn't allow monetization of sites like Youtube; I don't know the resolution.

I would tend to think that any type of ban would be opposed by such interests, which makes it more impressive that it is being widely adopted.

[Isserley]

Posted by shaberon (here)
The corollary is, at what age does it exactly become good for you?

I mean, I could say, wine and beer could be said to have something good for you, and, it is fine when you are three, since that is certainly when I started drinking them. But I'm not sure I can say there's an age where hard liquor really has anything good for you.

Of course, (excessive) use of all of the above will never be good for you, but problem is in a fact that children have no sense of self-monitoring and self-regulation.
They are incapable of walking away from the computer as you can effortlessly.

Discernment is a skill that must be actively taught and modeled by adults, as children and teens rely on clear boundaries and moral examples to learn when to persist and when to adapt.
Over time, these external structures help individuals internalize healthy patterns, enabling them to eventually exercise discernment independently to make confident, positive choices.

[shaberon]

Posted by Isserley (here)
Of course, (excessive) use of all of the above will never be good for you, but problem is in a fact that children have no sense of self-monitoring and self-regulation.
They are incapable of walking away from the computer as you can effortlessly.

Well, this is what I don't know and part of why I think America is different from most other places.

In other words, I come from a lack of human culture of any kind.

For example, I recently learned this about Europe in the 1960s:

The greater number of people who owned televisions led to the end of the traditional evening get-together known as the sijelo that once formed the focus of social life in Yugoslavia as people were too busy watching television in the evening.

I may know that tv is an "everything blocker", but, that's not because I had a sijelo that was interrupted by it.

Instead, around age 12 - 13, I found that the vast quantity of tv and other video/computer stuff offered to me was a cheap substitute for the fact that our system gives you nothing of value. I personally just let go of it, and began nosing around, for other cultural contributions, which I found, and am more happy with.


Although that puts me in a position to claim, in childhood, I personally was finished with it, this mentality has not gained traction.

I'm not sure how America could pull it off. I have greater hopes that other places have something else to pass along to the youth, particularly, rather than the simple notion of bans and restrictions. Here, we have specialized in a freakish distortion of childhood, for so long we know nothing else to turn to. The general observation so far is these people can't really work and they have no personality; that's the surface appearance.

If newer ones have a measurable drop in quality, I...I could honestly skip experiencing that. But here they come.

[Isserley]

Yes, TV is everything blocker and famous sijelo was cannibalized by broadcast entertainment.
But that didn't entirely stop people from socializing in other ways e.g.

Coffee drinking in Yugoslavia was a profound social ritual that blended Ottoman heritage with socialist-era leisure, serving as a primary mechanism for community bonding and political discourse.

The need for socialization has drastically decreased with the advent of technologies that offer just that - socialization on social networks.

I am completely in favor of banning new technologies for children and for some adults even. Possession of "smart" device should be made similar to that of weapons, of course not like in the US where you can get a gun at a kiosk. As it often is an instrument of crime.

I am particularly sensitive to these topics and I have to believe in a better tomorrow because I have a small child who is growing up in all of this and I often find myself face to face with parents of 4-5 year olds who have not yet spoken because they have had a tablet in their hands since day one. Horrible times.

[Open Minded Dude]

Just saw this in my sidebar and it really fits the thread. It's about (mostly black) High School students and the teacher has a breakdown because they cannot read or write ... at all. Shocking!

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=NTeWEaiz3Lk

From a comment on that page: "Imagine being so dumb you make your teacher cry."

[shaberon]

Posted by Isserley (here)
Coffee drinking in Yugoslavia was a profound social ritual that blended Ottoman heritage with socialist-era leisure, serving as a primary mechanism for community bonding and political discourse.

Yes!

Moreover, coffee drinking in Europe is 100% derived from the Ottomans at the Battle of Lepanto. It's one of those foreign habits.

Within only about a hundred years, it was branded as the devil's drink.


Why? That was how you socialized to challenge the status quo.

With alcohol you just get tired and incoherent; coffee drinkers can be riveted for hours discussing what is wrong with the king or whoever.

On the other hand, you might be surprised to know what constituted colonial-era gun control around here:


All males sixteen and older will own a rifle and come to fight when called.


That's exactly how we disposed of the British. The aftermath, that is, later politicians, threw it away and surrendered back and now we are effectively the British Empire of modern times. Everyone near the Ottoman Empire must be aware of the English monologue that kicked in around 1830 and hasn't really changed yet; the Russians are in the Caucasus -- they're about to take over India next!

Drivel.

I appreciate your strong stance about not sacrificing infant minds to a machine.

Again, I'm just different than most, being that as soon as I could walk, I went around to talk to everybody and it went really well, and, being part of an actual community seems like something I have to speak of in the light of an archeological relic, since I'm not able to find a living one.

Hearing that 4-5 year olds can't speak but they always had a tablet just sounds like genocide. I wish there was a way to get rid of that remark, but, if it is observable, we'll have to take it like a crown of thorns.

[DNA]

It's enough to drive you insane.

[shaberon]

Here's another quick look at -- I can't really say inability to read words, let alone fail to speak them -- but even despite some capacity to read them, you're not reading:

At the Age of “post-literacy”, a question may hit the mind of everyone that “How is the Flood of Information Drowning Human Intellect?

Topic: Contemporary Psychology, Technology, and the Culture of Reading

Introduction: The Paradox of the 21st Century: We live in the richest era in history in terms of access to data. With just a few touches on the screen, we have access to libraries, articles, and analyses from all over the world. But why, despite this unprecedented abundance of information, do we feel that human society is becoming more superficial, more bored, and more oblivious day by day?

What was predicted by thinkers two or three decades ago has today become our tangible, everyday reality: the ruthless encroachment of data on the privacy of thought and thought. We live in the age of information bombardment; an age in which the boundary between “knowledge” and “noise” has disappeared.

1. From intellectual nourishment to brain "self-eating": The human brain has an amazing and flexible structure. Reading and learning are the engines of activation and development of this vital organ. But unlike cloud memories and digital hard drives, the brain's deep processing capacity is not unlimited.
When data inputs exceed the brain's tolerance threshold, a reverse and destructive cycle begins: the phenomenon of cognitive self-eating.

At this stage, the brain not only loses the ability to analyze and organize new data, but also, due to the lack of opportunity for "memory consolidation", slowly forgets the deep archive of knowledge and fundamental concepts that it had previously stored. We read more, but we understand less and forget faster.
Daily data flood ──> Unstable concentration ──> Inability to analyze ──> Analysis of mental archive (decline of wisdom)

2. Entering the World of “Post-Literacy”: New global analytical reports show that this crisis is not regional or limited to a specific culture; it is a pervasive and transnational phenomenon. We are rapidly moving into what experts call the “post-literacy era.”

What is true literacy? Literacy is not simply the ability to read words; it is the possession of systematic, coherent, contextual, and in-depth knowledge about a subject.

What is post-literacy? A state in which active readers have given way to “passive consumers.” In this age, people consume a vast amount of headlines, short messages, social media posts, and instant information, but they have lost the ability to understand complex texts, analyze long arguments, and connect concepts.

3. The decline of art and the rise of “shallow artists”: The impact of this information overload is not limited to memory or general literacy; literature and art are also major victims of this trend.

As today’s audience becomes bored and preoccupied with receiving a quick dopamine hit from social media, their tastes change. This change in tastes creates a damaging feedback loop:

The consumer audience loses the ability to appreciate deep, complex, and layered works.
The market and algorithms push artists to produce “simplistic,” “marketable,” and “quick-to-consume” works.

As a result, a new generation of creators is emerging: superficial, shallow, and possibly meaningless.
Art, once a haven for deep thought and the nurturing of human wisdom, has itself become a product of the same noise factory.

4. Solution: Renaissance of classic media and "digital abstinence": To escape this cognitive swamp, one cannot hope for algorithms or newer technologies; because the essence of modern technologies is designed based on capturing momentary attention and fragmenting human concentration.

The antidote to this crisis is a conscious return to classical principles: escaping the rigidity of the screen: reducing the distance from smartphones and the non-stop Internet is the first step to recovering the attention span.

Taking refuge in paper media (books and newspapers): Reading on paper allows the brain to think linearly, patiently and deeply. Unlike social networks, books do not contain "notifications" and distracting links; books invite you to "silence of thought".

Slow Reading: Instead of accumulating information at hand, returning to original texts and reading them repeatedly re-waters the roots of wisdom in the mind.

Conclusion: A choice for the future of humanity: We stand at a civilizational crossroads: do we want to be beings with a huge accumulation of worthless data and fragmented minds, or patient humans with deep wisdom and coherent thought?

Saving thought, art, and literacy in today's world is a revolutionary act. This revolution begins with closing a tab in the browser, putting away your mobile phone, and opening a real book. Wisdom does not grow in the noise of data; wisdom is born in silence and depth.